Centurions With Sweaty Paws

By Ezra Bowen

It is hot, hot, hot inside the classroom in Brentwood, Long Island, about 90 muggy degrees. Nearly 300 men and women, clad in shorts, T shirts, jogging shoes and jeans -- a few with service revolvers in ankle holsters -- hunch against tables piled with books. Some affect a jaunty air, but most wear the look of the condemned. These are New York City police officers battling through a seven-hour cram session that covers everything from the penal code to traffic regulations. They are preparing for exams to determine who will be promoted and who will not.

"If you are off duty, when can you stop and frisk somebody?" asks Instructor Frank Connolly, a veteran police inspector, who retired in 1974. Answer: "Only inside your geographical area of employment." Later Connolly zeroes in on the distinction between larceny and robbery. A "perp" snatches a chain from a woman's neck, he hypothesizes. "Is it larceny or robbery?" Answer: "If he grabs the chain and breaks it without using force against her, you don't charge him with robbery unless you want to lose. Absent force, it's larceny."

% The odds against passing the exams are daunting. In New York, more than 15,600 cops are vying for an anticipated 2,500 sergeant vacancies, and 2,600 sergeants for 600 lieutenant slots. "Either you pass the test and get promoted, or you stay a cop for history," says Officer Michael Corr, 33. Corr took the sergeant's exam when it was last given in 1983. He failed by 3 points, losing the promotion with its $44,000 sergeant's pay -- $10,000 above a patrolman's maximum. If he misses again, the next round will probably not come up for four to six years (or whenever there are enough vacancies to justify an exam). "When you take the test," says Corr, "everybody knows -- your mother-in-law, the neighbors. If you fail, everybody knows that too. It's some humiliation."

Across the country, other police officers face the same ordeal. In San Francisco only twelve of the 80 officers who sweated through the ten-hour captain's exam in December made it. In Phoenix 37 crammed for up to two years for last April's lieutenant's test. Among them was Sergeant Lee Bennington, 46, who has taken the exam six times since 1972. This time he put in some 700 hours over twelve months, drilling with 3,000 homemade flashcards -- and passed. In Washington 1,187 who took May 21 officers' exams still await results.

They have been waiting for three years in Chicago. There a sergeant's exam, taken in 1985 by 6,000 officers, is under review by a federal judge after discrimination charges by minority candidates. The court has scolded the department for testing in a way that "had a substantial adverse impact on blacks, Hispanics and women." In New York minority candidates who failed in 1983 brought suit, and 200 won higher rank. Little Rock and San Francisco have faced similar challenges.

Ironically, police exams were introduced in the mid-1960s to bring fairness to promotion, which had long been a matter of connections. Legal challenges have led testmakers to revise the questions, making them more detailed and less interpretive. "A question that asks for interpretation can be open to challenge," explains Joanne Adams of Washington's International Personnel Management Association, the largest producer of U.S. police exams. Unfortunately, the new exams are so exacting, she says, that contestants must stuff their heads with "tiny bits of specific knowledge."

Sample questions from the New York lieutenant's study guide illustrate just how specific: Under what circumstances may a stun gun be used to restrain an emotionally disturbed person? Under what circumstances can a child be removed from his or her home? What information can be made available to the press when an arrest is made?

Some cities have added oral exams and simulation exercises. In Corpus Christi, Texas, contenders for the job of police chief had to face interrogation by real reporters at a mock news conference. For many of those cramming for such challenges, major life choices are at stake. Jeanette Dice, 26, and her husband Brian, 31, both took the New York sergeant's exam last week. If she passes, says Dice, "I could take off for a year, have a baby, then go back to work and have enough money to hire a sitter." Otherwise? "I might look somewhere else for a job."

With reporting by Wayne Svoboda/New York, with other bureaus